It asks why disgraced former archbishop Rembert Weakland is being honored next Tuesday, January 12th, with giving the keynote address at the Cathedral on the renovation of St. John's Cathedral.

As part of that renovation, Weakland commissioned charitable money to be used to create a bronze relief of himself pictured in the biblical scene of Jesus protecting the little children. Further, in the Weakland bronze relief, which serves as a pedestal to the Virgin Mary at the Cathedral's east side altar, Weakland is flanked by St. John the Evangelist and St. Anne, the mother of Mary.

In 2002 it was revealed that Weakland paid half a million dollars in hush money to a man who says Weakland sexually abused him. Later, retired Archbishop Rembert Weakland admitted in a video deposition that he transferred priests with a history of sexual misconduct back into churches without alerting parishioners.

December 17, 2009 - The Faith Institute for Cultural Studies - whose work has been praised by the Communist Party of China (CPC) - has released updated statistics on the Church in China. According to the institute, there are nearly 6 million Catholics, 3,397 clergy, 5,451 women religious, 628 major seminarians, and 630 minor seminarians.

The Catholic Patriotic Association (CPA) reports that 5.3 million persons worship in its churches, and it is estimated that there are an additional 12 million or more persons who worship in unregistered Catholic churches that do not affiliate with the CPA. According to official sources, the Government-sanctioned CPA has more than 70 bishops, nearly 3,000 priests and nuns, 6,000 churches and meeting places, and 12 seminaries.

There are thought to be approximately 40 bishops operating "underground," some of whom are in prison or under house arrest. Of the 97 dioceses in the country, 40 reportedly did not have an acting bishop in 2007, and more than 30 bishops were over 80 years of age.

T.D.

Catholic Compromise with Communism in China

TIA,

News was recently published that Catholic Bishop Leon Yao Liang, the auxiliary bishop of Xiwanzi in Hebei, China, died on December 30, 2009. He was 87.

In 1958, Bishop Yao was sentenced to life imprisonment in a labor camp for the "crime" of maintaining fealty to the Pope and Catholic Church. He was finally released from the prison in 1984 after 28 years in labor camps and prison. For years after his release from prison in 1984, Bishop Yao urged his parishioners to follow a course of quiet but steadfast opposition both to the Patriotic Catholic Association and to government curbs on their right to worship. But after Pope Benedict wrote his Letter to Chinese Catholics making improved ties between the Vatican and Beijing a priority, Bishop Yao began working to repair relations with the government.

It is very sad. We expect intense pressure from the Chinese government to join the Communist Patriotic Church. The result is martyrs. We don't expect pressure from the Vatican for the heroic underground Church to abandon their fight, but that is what is happening today. The result is concessions to Communism and compromises.

It is very sad.

J.F.

The Duplin Report

Mr. Guimaraes,

Thanks for your article on the Dublin report. Again you say the things that are being swept under the carpet. It's high time someone states the obvious - that the post-Vatican II Popes - including the present one - have to take some responsibility for the homosexual-pedophilia abuse crisis in our Church.

Regarding the recent Dublin scandal, the survivors support group One in Four rightly described the Papal response as "disingenuous and inadequate." The Vatican statement said that "the Holy Father shares the outrage, betrayal and shame felt by so many of the faithful in Ireland, and he is united with them in prayer at this difficult time in the life of the Church."

That's all very well and good, but it was not an apology. It also ignores the fact that the files of clerical sex abusers were routinely sent to the Vatican over the years. The cover-up starts at the top.

Certainly Card. Ratzinger, who presided over the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith for so many years, must have been aware of the extent of the problem. It was Card. Ratzinger who issued a secret Vatican edict to Catholic bishops all over the world, instructing them to put the Church's interests ahead of child safety. The same Cardinal reinforced the strict cover-up policy by introducing the principle that the Vatican must have what it calls "exclusive competence," which meant that all child abuse allegations should be dealt with directly by Rome. All this was documented in the BBC Panorama documentary Sex Crimes and The Vatican in 2006. Church officials - including traditionalists - averted their eyes and pretended not to see.

The Vatican continues to do all it can to ensure that ultimate responsibility does not land at its door. In Ireland - as in the United States, Canada, Australia, the UK, France, Italy, Austria, Poland and Argentina - it is pretending these criminal abuses by priests against children are problems of the "local church."

I think anyone with brains can see by now that the issue of child sex abuse by the clergy and the cover up is far from a set of local problems but a worldwide phenomenon - that demands investigation from the top downwards.

This would be one way to start to clean the post Vatican II church.

In Cristo Rey,

P.H.

Posted January 12, 2010

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